There’s an art and a science of designing your wellness experience for maximum engagement. Here are some important principles to keep in mind. ONE Start off your relationship with the participant by adding immediate value. Example: “Everyone who registers gets a fun sheet to download: twenty questions to identify your rapport skills and style.” Treat program registration the way marketers view lead-generation, using techniques that have been proven to work based on human behavior. Provide an immediate reward for the hassle of registration. TWO All materials should clearly, simply, and persuasively nudge employees to take the next step. Examples: eye-catching visuals, minimal text, big fonts,…

The Sugar Show won a platinum Hermes Award, an international competition for creative professionals in corporate marketing, communication, and production. That was nice to hear, because I’m pretty happy with how the program turned out. We did a lot of writing and planning for it to be a success, and a ton of editing and mixing afterward. A big part of the credit goes to Rachael Jamison, a radio and podcast professional, and two of her podcasting colleagues Brian and Jessica. Their sense of fun and camaraderie really made the game show aspect fun to listen to. They nailed it. So a big thank you to…

Here are the major takeaways from the 5-part article on Google’s vision for the future of audio: Google plans to double podcast consumption in the next few years Google’s goal is to make audio content and information as accessible and valued as text and video The first step was to put podcasts in google search results – with a play button on android phones right in the search results They are planning to transcribe audio into text to make it completely searchable (YouTube already does this) A content producer could flag the beginning of logical sections so that users can easily jump to the desired…

Google is strategizing how to deliver audio at the right time in the proper context, not just via podcasting apps. This 5-part article explains how Google sees it all coming together. Their plans for audio are ambitious – for one thing, they plan to double current podcast consumption over the next few years. One part of the strategy is to provide audio anywhere the user happens to be, in whatever device makes sense in that context. It might be your phone, or Google Home, or your car. With that in mind… What could a wellness program look like… While you are running? (motivational audio) While…

Here are a few important highlights from a Forbes article, May 18, 2018: “According to Edison Research, an estimated 73 million of American’s age 12 and above listen to podcasts monthly, and 48 million report listening weekly. And both these listening frequencies continue to grow. In addition, the number of podcasts people listen to each week has increased from five to seven in just the past year.” “There’s been much talk of all the different forms of audio—traditional over-the-air radio, digital services like Spotify, and podcasting— morphing into one medium under the title of audio.” “All these are forms of audio. The only difference really…

As an industry, we have to get smart about engagement. As I say in other posts, there are good reasons why employees often ignore typical wellness offerings. I’ve seen content that simply isn’t very original or inspiring in pretty much every corner of the corporate wellness world. If this were television, a lot of it would deserve its low ratings. We have to level up if we hope to compete against all the cool things that vie for every moment of our employees’ digital lives. We need to determine what wellness programs people find compelling and irresistible. To find what works, we need data. With…

Creating good content is hard. In a recent audio wellness show, I ended with an inspirational “you can do it” message. After recording it, I added some dramatic music as a backdrop. The message was good, but the “uplifting” music made the segment hokey. While reviewing it, I kept thinking of that scene in Rocky where he is training for the big match, doing pushups and running through streets and up the stairs, and that goofy theme song is playing: “Trying hard now! Getting strong now!” (What’s that, you don’t remember that the Rocky Theme has words? The lyrics are bad… really bad… at least…

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the word “wellness” is growing stale and that the fresh new word is “wellbeing.” Some wellness vendors have completely switched to the new word; others are phasing it out. To some degree, this is a natural cycle – a word becomes boring over time and a new buzzword takes its place. The transition to the word wellbeing, though, represents a big shift. Let’s start with definitions. The term wellness implies a goal of bending a company’s medical cost curve by helping employees develop healthier habits. Programs focus on walking, nutrition, smoking, and the like. Data is collected through yearly screenings…

When building out their wellness and well-being benefits, many employers want a quit smoking program to be part of the mix. It’s a great service to offer because the majority of smokers DO want to quit. I don’t need to go into the risks and potential harms of smoking. You know already. Smoking hurts a person’s health, that’s the bottom line. As we all know, though, quitting is not particularly easy. Let’s look at it from the eyes of a participant who wants to quit. There’s a good chance they’ve tried to quit before, but they weren’t prepared to develop the new habits that are…

When you are responsible for delivering an exciting wellness program to employees, one of the key challenges is keeping the programs fresh over time. That’s not easy, by any stretch. Many wellness professionals spend considerable time looking for new ideas, new ways to engage people in their health, new topics, and more convenient formats. As someone who oversaw the wellness programs and platform functionality for an end-to-end wellness solution for 7 years, my job was to keep things interesting for hundreds of clients and their employees. I didn’t want to rely on gimmicky technology or trendy features. Gimmicks only engage people for a short time.…